Ford became the only vice-president and president who wasn't elected to either office.

Ford became the only vice-president and president who wasn't elected to either office.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Gerald Rudolph Ford, who steered the United States out of one of its greatest Constitutional crises, was a decent man destined to be remembered as the only president never elected on a national ticket.
His death Tuesday came just six weeks after he became the longest-lived president in U.S. history, surpassing the life span of Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004 at 93 years and 120 days. It also ends an unprecedented era in American history that saw five presidents alive at the same time.
Ford took the helm of a nation sharply polarized by the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon from the office.
"Americans will always admire Gerald Ford's unflinching performance of duty and the honorable conduct of his administration and the great rectitude of the man himself," President Bush said. "For a nation that needed healing and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most."
Became president
Tapped by President Nixon to be vice president when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign over tax evasion charges, Ford became president when Nixon quit to avoid all-but-certain impeachment for the cover-up of the 1972 burglary at Democratic party headquarters at Washington's Watergate complex.
Ford pardoned Nixon and said he believed it was for the good of the nation, but the nation apparently didn't agree, turning Ford out of the White House when he sought election in his own right in 1976.
As president from 1974 to 1977, Ford sought to restore Americans' faith in government, presided over the end of the Vietnam War, strived to mend relations between the White House and Congress and made it a priority to bring the ravages of inflation under control.
"He held the nation together in a very turbulent time," said Roderick Hart, professor of communication and government at the University of Texas-Austin. "He was very modest, not a sterling president. He was thrust into a series of situations and was in over his head from the beginning."
Ford said he found the presidency not to be as powerful an office as it is believed to be.
"The best is the feeling that, to a degree, you can actually do something to make things better for the country," he said.
Ford also married Elizabeth "Betty" Bloomer, a member of Martha Graham's dance troop. They had four children: Michael, Jack, Steven and Susan.
Moving up
In Washington, Ford quickly moved up the GOP ranks, serving on the House Appropriations Committee and winning the No. 2 post of Republican whip in 1963 and Republican leader in 1965. Even so, Ford found time to serve as a PTA officer at his children's high school in Alexandria, Va.
Ford speech writer Craig Smith called Ford a "consensus leader" in Congress, which was controlled by Democrats for most of Ford's political career.
"Ford is what I would call a responsible or authentic conservative, [and] fairly libertarian," Smith said.
But as crisis hit the Nixon administration after 1972's break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, the White House increasingly relied on Ford to help the administration deal with a slowly escalating scandal.
In 1973, Agnew was forced to resign as vice president after pleading no-contest to tax evasion in a case involving corruption in Maryland, where Agnew had been governor. Nixon asked Ford to become vice president in December 1973, giving Ford a front-row seat as Nixon tried simultaneously to manage the mushrooming Watergate scandal and withdraw from Vietnam.
Friendship with Nixon
Ford was caught in the middle of forces he couldn't control. He had been friends with Nixon since he first came to Washington.
Appointed, not elected, as Nixon's vice president, Ford gradually distanced himself.
"If I were too supportive of Nixon and something turned up, then it would have made me look ridiculous. The media would have accused me of being a patsy," he later explained. "If I were too critical of Nixon, if I backed off and criticized him, undercutting him in public, the impression would have been that I was trying to get rid of him so I could be president."
But with Congress preparing to impeach Nixon, Nixon opted to resign Aug. 9, 1974, and allow Ford to assume the presidency and finish out Nixon's term. With that, he became the only U.S. vice president and president to assume the nation's top posts without being elected to either.
A month later, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon. "Someone must write the end to [Watergate]," Ford said.
Ford's pardon remained a fatal issue for his presidency and was a dominant negative in the 1976 presidential elections.
Ford fended off a primary challenge from California Gov. Ronald Reagan and went on to lose the 1976 election to Democrat Jimmy Carter by 500,000 votes.
The White House years took their toll on both Ford and his wife, who admitted an addiction to alcohol and pills and went on to found the Betty Ford Clinic to help others overcome addiction.
Humor
As president, Ford found himself the target of comedy spoofs as a klutz despite his lifelong athletic skills, but in private life he and his presidential library sponsored a presidential humor symposium that featured "Saturday Night Live" comedian Chevy Chase, whose stumbling impersonations of Ford became a trademark. Ford said the stumblebum image never bothered him. "It goes with the territory," he said.
Ford returned to Washington in June 2003 to be feted on his 90th birthday, when he joined the ranks of John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan as the only presidents to live to 90.
At his 90th birthday celebration in Washington, Ford told well-wishers he hoped to be remembered as a man who tried to heal a nation's wounds: "I hope historians 50 years from now would say that President Ford took over in a very difficult time -- when we had the Watergate scandal, the war in Vietnam, economic problems -- and in a period when there was great distrust of the White House, he restored public confidence," he said.
Failing health
In recent years, Ford's age caught up with him. He suffered two mild strokes since 2000. He was hospitalized for tests last December. In January, he developed pneumonia and spent 12 days in the hospital. In August, doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., implanted a cardiac pacemaker in Ford's chest and performed a coronary angioplasty. In October, he again was hospitalized for unspecified tests. The last public statement by the former commander-in-chief came Nov. 12, when he reached the age of 93 years and 121 days. Characteristically, he played down the significance of the historic benchmark he had surpassed. Far more important to him was the affection of his family and friends, he said. "I thank God for the gift of every sunrise, and even more, for all the years He has blessed me with Betty and the children, with our extended family and the friends of a lifetime," Ford's statement said.